By Hundreds of thousands of Oromo civilians are being displaced by government and ethnic violence in Ethiopia but where can they find safety and support? Certainly not in Egypt, according to the latest Oromia Support Group (OSG) report.
The OSG Report, released at the end of January, documents how the government of Egypt and UNHCR, the UN refugee agency, are failing refugees, especially Oromo asylum seekers from Ethiopia. Their misery and insecurity in Cairo is a damning indictment of Egypt’s failure to meet its responsibilities to refugees under international humanitarian law, and the inability and unwillingness of UNHCR to live up to its mandate of aiding and protecting refugees.
In a familiar pattern of disengagement with Oromo refugees and asylum seekers, UNHCR in Egypt refuses to acknowledge their plight in Ethiopia. Their treatment in Cairo is consistent with the agency’s failings in other destinations, previously reported by OSG.
Within the last two years, OSG has documented the refusal, after decade-long delays, of UNHCR to grant refugee status to Oromo and has failed to prevent their forced repatriation from Somaliland (Report 58) and failed to prevent the forced return of Oromo refugees and asylum-seekers from Djibouti (Report 59).
Similarly, in Egypt, 70 to 80 percent of Oromo applicants were refused refugee status in 2022, according to a local NGO director. Among 56 Oromo interviewed by OSG in September and October 2022, less than half (25) had been granted status, despite their histories of persecution in Ethiopia.
Out of 21 who had appealed against a negative decision, given after waiting an average of three years, only two were awarded refugee status – after periods in Egypt totaling six and eight years. Eleven had been waiting for an initial decision for an average of four years. Fourteen had their files closed after five years in Cairo and another five were still awaiting their appeal decision after six years. This is indeed the shoddy treatment of vulnerable people.
‘Closed file applicants’ are denied assistance by many of UNHCR’s partner organizations. A negative decision by UNHCR also puts refugees at increased risk of detention and deportation. Without papers showing either asylum-seeker or refugee status, they are liable to arrest when away from their homes, when seeking work, or when attending themselves or accompanying children or others to a health facility. Deportation is an ever-present threat.
Even documented migrants may be detained and removed. Three weeks before OSG’s visit, 33 registered asylum seekers, mostly from Eritrea, were arrested and deported.
UNHCR’s capacity and willingness to visit detention facilities in Aswan and elsewhere, from where deportations occur, is now limited compared to 2013 when OSG visited previously. Already understaffed, the UN body is also underfunded, expecting a 20 percent drop in income next year. It is the only self-funding UN organization, a fact that underscores the reluctance of most countries to deal constructively with the world’s growing refugee population.
Refugees told OSG four months ago that ‘UNHCR is tired and doesn’t want to listen’ and ‘When we go there, they don’t even speak to us. We spend all day in the queue and are not spoken to. They closed their window and told me to go back.’
Refugee status determination interviews were short, interrupted, and poorly translated. UNHCR staff were reported to be disinterested and uncaring. One woman, in tears, when recollecting the death of her 5-year-old son during her interview, was told ‘Cry at home. Don’t cry here.’
UNHCR is virtually inaccessible to Oromo refugees and asylum-seekers, and their advocates. OSG made several attempts to contact UNHCR in Cairo; through a former UNHCR representative, through local NGO leaders, and directly, by phone and email; but received no response.
UNHCR has made no consistent attempts to reach out to the 10,000-plus Oromo community, despite invitations from the Oromo Elders Union, which speaks for Oromo from all parts of Oromia and on behalf of Oromo of all faiths.
In the last decade, there has been a five-fold increase in the number of Oromo refugees in Egypt. Despite this, they have less representation and contact with UNHCR and its partner and implementing organizations.
Experiences in Ethiopia
Between 24 September and 3 October 2022, OSG interviewed 56 refugees about the abuses in Ethiopia from which they had fled. Their testimonies were compared with 26 interviewed almost a decade previously, in May 2013. In all, these 82 accounts were representative snapshots of human rights violations in Ethiopia since 1992, spanning three generations and two governments. These three decades of abuses of Oromo civilians provide an important backdrop to contemporary atrocities.
Contrary to claims by some NGOs, including UNHCR representatives to whom OSG has spoken in 2010 and 2011, all 82 interviewees left Ethiopia to escape persecution and abuse. Not one of the interviewees was an economic migrant.
The only change in accounts since Prosperity Party rule under Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed is the pretext for their forced exile. Under the EPRDF, Oromo fled persecution because they or their relatives either supported or were suspected of sympathizing with the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF); those who arrived in Cairo after 2018 were involved with the nonviolent Qeerroo pro-democracy movement which propelled Abiy to power. Their friends and relatives had joined the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA), which broke away from the OLF in 2019 to challenge the Ethiopian government militarily. The interviews confirmed that many who took part in the grassroots Qeerrroo movement joined OLA because of the slaughter of their colleagues by the Abiy regime.
OLF members were still a significant proportion of those interviewed in 2022, although the party, which returned to Ethiopia following a peace deal in 2018, was legally recognized. Nonetheless, its leaders and supporters remain in detention. Supporters of other opposition parties, the Oromo Federalist Congress and its forerunner, the Oromo Federalist Democratic Movement, were also among those who had fled and were interviewed.
Extra-judicial killings of refugees’ relatives, friends, and co-detainees were committed by Ethiopian government forces. In all, over 216 killings were described. Summary executions of 43 civilians were reported, 29 of which were of close family members executed by EPRDF forces in 1992 and 1993. At least 100 died in detention, 84 in the notorious Hamaresa Military Camp in East Hararge within a three-month period in 1999. A large number of deaths from torture and neglect in this camp was previously reported by three refugees in Somaliland (Report 47) and South Africa (Report 49). Refugees interviewed in Cairo also described relatives dying from torture injuries after release from detention. At least another 21 people are presumed dead after disappearing in custody.
In a surprising revelation, a health professional who was severely tortured before being forced to the battlefront in Tigray described how 40-50 wounded Tigrayan soldiers were deliberately murdered by lethal injection after interrogation by Ethiopian government forces between January and June 2022.
The latest testimonies confirm previous OSG reports of extraordinarily high rates of torture and rape in detention. Out of 244 refugees OSG interviewed in Kenya, Djibouti, Somaliland, South Africa, and Egypt between 2010 and 2022, 133 (55 percent) had been tortured; 79 percent of the 169 former detainees. Rates of torture reported by the 82 in Cairo were overall 72 percent, 77 percent of former detainees – 88 percent of 51 male former detainees and 54 percent of 26 female former detainees.
Out of the 244 refugees interviewed in Africa, 105 were women, 61 of whom had been held in detention. Over half (32/61) were raped. There were especially high rates of rape among women interviewed in Egypt.
Among 28 women in Cairo, 20 of the 26 former detainees – 77 percent – had been raped. One of the men interviewed in 2022 had also been raped in detention, among many acts of torture which he experienced.
Journey to Egypt
For several refugees, their ordeals in Ethiopia were matched or exceeded by the horrors they experienced at the hands of smugglers and human traffickers who captured them in Sudan. Five of those interviewed in 2013 described torture and enslavement in Sudan and organ harvesting in the Sinai peninsula. This process has since evolved into a more sustainably profitable business. Smugglers and traffickers still treat refugees as commodities to be traded or stolen by rival gangs, but since 2015, they stopped taking victims to Sinai for extortion, torture, and organ harvesting. The bases in Sinai are believed to have been related to ISIS, which has been removed from the peninsula. The trafficked refugees are now simply photographed and pursued after arrival in Cairo, where they are preyed upon for payment of monies owed – up to $9000 per refugee.
Experiences in Cairo
Due to corrupt practices and division among Oromo refugee organizations, which deepened after damaging interference from Ethiopia’s political opposition in 2015, there is no longer any organization that represents Oromo interests and which has any influence with UNHCR and other NGOs. Although the Oromo Elders Union has a broad base of Oromo of all faiths and from all zones of Oromia, it is not trusted or accepted by UNHCR or other NGOs.
Xenophobia and hostility to refugees are huge problems. Oromo refugees reported that xenophobic attacks were particularly directed at them because of the dispute between Egypt and Ethiopia over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam on the Blue Nile. However, this is disputed by members of the NGO community, who believe the hostility is general to all refugees. Nonetheless, interviewed Oromo refugees said that Egyptian officials, health care professionals, and UNHCR local staff and guards told them to ‘Go back to Ethiopia and turn the Nile back on’ before they could be helped.
The Egyptian police are corrupt and prey on refugees, taking bribes and stealing from them. Although there was only one instance of help being denied by police because of the Nile issue, they show no interest in following up on crimes against refugees unless the names and addresses of perpetrators are provided by the victims.
In Cairo, rates of street violence, especially sexual violence, are getting worse. Refugees reported more than 70 incidents of rape, robbery, beating, kidnapping, and attempted abduction in 2022, compared to one-tenth of that number in 2013, albeit reported by fewer refugees. The staff of NGOs in Cairo corroborated the increase in violence and sexual violence in the last decade.
Refugees told of frequent episodes of apparently random street violence and targeted attacks by Ethiopian embassy operatives but the majority of violence and sexual violence was perpetrated by interconnected criminal gangs of people smugglers and job brokers, to extort money demanded by traffickers taking refugees across Sudan to Egypt. Job brokers were particularly likely to rape women who were seeking employment and to demand that they pay off traffickers who took them and their families to Cairo.
Very few refugees and their families have any regular income, relying on outside help and occasional casual work, usually cleaning or manual labor. Financial help from NGOs was reported in 2013 but only three of the interviewees in 2022 received direct assistance, notwithstanding medical assessment and care, legal advice, and counseling.
Most refugee children had opportunities for primary education but some could not afford fees, however small. Higher education was not available for most, which blighted the prospects for refugees and their families.
Fear and insecurity prevented refugees, especially in 2022, from working, seeking work, taking children to school or even mixing with other children to play. Unregistered asylum-seekers and those who have been refused refugee status by UNHCR, over 500 and possibly thousands, are particularly vulnerable because of their liability to detention and deportation.
Due to their experiences in Ethiopia, on the journey, and in Cairo, there were several instances of severe mental illness, suicide, and attempted suicide reported by interviewees in both 2013 and 2022.
Under 1 percent of refugees in Egypt (approximately 2000) are resettled to a third country each year. Interviewees reported over 20 Oromo families who had experienced delays, disappointments, and last-minute cancellations to their arranged resettlement in 2022.
Recommendations
The misery and insecurity of Oromo refugees in Cairo merit urgent attention. UNHCR should make more effort to engage with the Oromo community. Meeting with the Oromo Elders Union would be a good start.
Other NGOs should similarly meet with and establish firm relations with the Oromo Elders Union to understand the persecution of Oromo in Ethiopia and see through the disinformation which pervades received wisdom about the country.
As the OSG report concludes, ‘given the dangers currently faced by Oromo people, from federal forces and Amhara region forces, UNHCR should consider granting prima facie refugee status for all Oromo refugees.’
The Oromo Elders Union has members with the enthusiasm and knowledge to establish self-help groups for health education, primary health care, child and baby care, Afaan Oromo and other language literacy classes for children and adults, elementary schools, advice centers, and translators for hospital and other appointments.
Oromo in the global diaspora could help fund such projects. The distress of Oromo refugees in Cairo is unacceptable, but it is not inevitable. With effort and support from Oromo around the world, their plight could be improved.
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